The Elephant In The Room (Help Me, Help You)

Athol: I’ve now seen thousands of cases of struggling marriages, infidelity, near misses with cheating, sexless marriages, walk-a-way wives and sudden divorce drama. I really do mean thousands upon thousands. MMSL has had a busy three years.

As someone who has been part of the Manosphere and now slowing drifting mainstream, I have a rather disappointing realization. The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault. Are there some really quite questionable laws slanted against men – yes. Is there a systematic miss-education about what makes up a good relationship – yes. Is the Manosphere basically right about everything…. yep pretty much. Once you dial down the rage and listen to the deeper messages, there’s not too much I disagree with.

But I gotta tell you, I’m starting to get tired of individual men not facing up to the truth about their active role in their failed relationship.

There are unquestionably a very small percentage of women who are evil, bait and switch golddigging cunts, who deserve to experience a poorly skilled plastic surgeon. But the truth is that most women who become wives, are all in once they marry. You have to actively do something wrong to mess that loyalty up. Do they still Fitness Test and generally whine that the house isn’t big enough… yes… but that’s what they are designed to do. This is normal female behavior. If you don’t want to hear occasional complaints about your income, marry an ugly chick.

Jennifer: Dear you should edit out “ugly chick”, you just lost 60% of your female audience.

Athol: But I can lead with “Everything is the man’s fault” and that’s okay? Wouldn’t that drive 60% of my male readers away?

Jennifer: You have a point.

Athol: I think you’re my sexist oppressor.

Jennifer: Don’t push it lol.

Athol: Anyway….

The hard truth is if you go long enough with the case history, every single time after the husband’s rage has died down… and it may take years for that to happen…. he makes an admission of a gross lapse of his judgment during the marriage. I really don’t mean a little tiny thing either, I mean something bad enough where you suddenly sit back in shock and can’t help but mentally re-evaluate him as 20 IQ points less smart. As in, “Holy crap dude, why didn’t you do something about that?” “Really? She told you about XYZ and you just ignored it?” “She wrote you five letters about ABC?” “You had ED for how many years before she cheated?”

It’s the Elephant in the Room.

I’ve also several times now given appallingly bad advice because readers have withheld information from me. Some classic examples being not telling me about the abortion the husband asked the wife to get, erectile dysfunction spread over several years, endless job losses for poorly explained reasons, obvious mate guarding failure, swinging, bankruptcy, the husband’s own affair, medical issues and addictions. When someone tells me about their wife’s Batshit Crazy behavior for months on end, neglecting to tell me the whole time that just prior to the start of her Batshit Crazy behavior he had been caught with his pants down… I’m just going to give the dead wrong advice. Likewise if your wife leaves you for another man and then after six months of contact with me, you finally reveal that the other man was someone you’d done several threesomes with… ugh. Just ugh.

So here’s the deal. That thing that you really don’t want to come clean about. That thing that you don’t want anyone to know about. That’s the thing that’s fucking up your whole marriage. That’s the thing you need to face up to and get out into the open. MMSL isn’t going to be able to save your marriage, while you try and keep three tons of elephant droppings from seeing the light of day.

There have been a number of times where I have straight up told a husband to divorce his wife because of her [Totally Unacceptable Behavior], as in behavior so bad I’ve personally gotten angry and lost my temper simply reading about what she did. Then I’ve had to listen to the husband rather calmly tell me she was getting another chance because of [The Elephant in the Room].

Well maybe if you told me about [The Elephant in the Room] five months ago, maybe your wife’s [Totally Unacceptable Behavior] wouldn’t have happened. It’s almost like you planned it to happen… which is cool if you’re into that sort of thing, but please don’t drag me into email exchanges about it. And stop lying your ass off about how “I didn’t realize it was important.” You damn well know it’s important… you sure guard it’s knowledge from leaking out into conversation like it’s got fish hooks in your balls.

And to be 100% clear here. I’m not going to judge you for your problem. The only thing I care about is fixing your problem. As in if you’re a total porn addict, I’m not going to tell you you’re a horrible person that should be ashamed of yourself, I’m just going to tell you how to kick it and get on with a happy marriage. Everyone comes with a bag of trash to MMSL, no one is perfect, we all need help. I just can’t stand the lying and the time wasting trying to get your life sorted out.

So what I’m saying is help me, help you.

So tell the truth about The Elephant in the Room. That’s where you’re going to get 50% of your total progress from. Buy the book, and join the forum.

Comments

Yes men has a pivotal role in this whole meltdown of marriage across America but I think the untold story is the utter unleashing of female hypergamey that is directly tied to the empowerment of women. There really is nothing to stop women from constantly looking out over the horizon for the king alpha. At a certain point an average man is not going to be able withstand the avalanche of shit tests he is going to have to overcome. It just gets tiring. I really think that’s the untold story: hympergamey.

I think that’s why you have a sea of 30 year old women who can’t settle. I think that’s why you have frivoulous divorce. I think that’s why you have lots and lots of infidelity. I get the point about a man not maintaining his attractive features, but what i don’t get is the media’s flat out ingoring of women’s poor choices as a result of their uncontrollable hypergamey.

It’s about time someone held men to account for the mistakes they make in their marriages/relationships. My ex-gf dumped me and at the time, I thought it came out of nowhere. 12 months and lots of reflection later, I could have given you a VERY long list of all the reasons why she was totally justified in having left me. When I think about it, frankly I’m amazed she stuck around as long as she did. Not that she was perfect – far from it. But someone needs to be held accountable for my actions and it’s me.

So what I got out of the whole situation was that I had lots of things I needed to deal with within myself, to ensure that I didn’t repeat the same mistakes the next time and was much more aware of where I was going wrong and to rectify issues as they arise.

Really Athol? The women that get down to 110 lbs. just before the wedding only to blow up to 200 2 years after the wedding. That gets a pass? Or the woman that hooks up w/ the old high school flame on facebook That gets a pass? Or the woman that just decides on her own accord that she doesn’t want to go back to work after kids after all. No now she wants to be a stay at home mom. That gets a pass? Or the woman that just “forgot” to take her pills regularly and now “oops” she’s pregnant. That gets a pass? Really?

I will agree that there are usually signs that all is not well in the marriage long before divorces. I will agree that most men will ignore the problem signs. But it’s a pretty big leap to say it’s the man’s fault.

Let’s face it. As humans we all marry “as good as we think we can get”. That means that each party in a marriage is less than perfect. It is what it is. Yet most people in marriages are pretty well matched in terms of positive and negative attributes. We tend to hang w/ people who are about our equals. I fail to see how a marriage between less than perfect people that ends in divorce becomes the man’s fault.

My best bud is divorced. Marriage brought out his natural beta. He doted on his wife. He did everything for the family. He let his wife walk all over him being a nice guy. How is the divorce his fault? Yes his wife gave him signs that she was not happy. But could she not have told him “grow a pair already”? He was a nice guy when she married him. Was he supposed to turn into a different guy after marriage?

What am I missing here?

That the husband is the Captain and leader of the relationship whether he likes it or not, and has always been the Captain whether he knew it or not from the beginning of the relationship. In every other situation, the team leader is more responsible for a failure than a team member.

Frustrating, no? In working with new people in recovery, there is usually a point where a good sponsor, after a little relationship and trust-building has happened, will ask – what aren’t you telling me? (Or, have lied to me? Left anything out?)

Stuff is hard to talk about, but wastes your time. Part of it is a lot of people with issues want to be the victim. Your approach is totally not from that direction. (Also, your approach has a much better chance of working…)

I disagree. As a natural who learned to put verbiage and concept around subconscious behavior from sites like MMSL/CH/RM, learning what to filter for shoots your theory I think, or maybe just affects the when more than the what.

The sad reality is that 95% of American women have rendered themselves unmarriagable for a man with any self esteem or value. Who cares if they leave. or who causes it, or if the next one is any better?

It feels like devolution, as the best men choose to wait it out, the retard dudes pop out kids and support the divorce/family court regime. A high value girl is really rare and hard as hell to find, and the baseline is shifting down.

“The women that get down to 110 lbs. just before the wedding only to blow up to 200 2 years after the wedding. That gets a pass? Or the woman that hooks up w/ the old high school flame on facebook That gets a pass? Or the woman that just decides on her own accord that she doesn’t want to go back to work after kids after all. No now she wants to be a stay at home mom. That gets a pass? Or the woman that just “forgot” to take her pills regularly and now “oops” she’s pregnant. That gets a pass? Really?”

They don’t get passes but like the saying goes “evil triumphs because good men do nothing”. If a man isn’t leading his wife she’ll gain that weight with no ramifications. She’ll hook up with that boyfriend because he isn’t being a man…if she makes her own decisions that means he isn’t leading again. If he is letting her be in charge of the reproduction…again failure in leadership.

3 things men need to be to women…1) a leader 2) dominate 3) confident.

One comment I read in the manoshere was “if the is a woman present, any discussion about men’s issues, will eventually and always, turn into a demand of what women want from men.”

MMSL has started to become the new “screech about husbands” site.

Ignoring the fact that many women exhibit completely irrational behavior like hypergamy, rationalization hamsters, solipsism, walk away wifery is just part of the crazy.

Blame men, its the easy way out. After all, women don’t have blame, they have “syndromes” that remove them from responsibilities. Go tell it to the guys who don’t understand the red pill. Let them know that loyalty and faithfullness and being a good provider (as the world has drilled into their heads) isn’t enough. They also need to live in a way that feels unnatural to them in order to survive the day she comes home “uuuuuunnnnnnhhhhhhhaaaaaaappppppyyyyyyy” and blows up 20 years of giving her exactly what she said she wanted.

“That the husband is the Captain and leader of the relationship whether he likes it or not, and has always been the Captain whether he knew it or not from the beginning of the relationship. In every other situation, the team leader is more responsible for a failure than a team member. ”

What this would mean is that successful relationships are also always the accomplishment of the man and so he deserves all the glory for it. You can`t have it both ways and give men the responsibility for failure and share the glory of success. I`m not so sure the women in successful marriages wants to see it that way.

There is also the problem of the chemistry changes that set in after 2-3 years. Far from all women and men are equipped to be able to feel very strong attraction after that phase. I doubt that being a good captain is enough for a lot of people because once the love chemistry changes a bunch of people are just going to get out of there anyway.

Then there is the problem of the wife who marries a guy she is only mildly attracted to or not attracted to at all. Maybe she is even an alpha widow. Even if he did manage to take on a good captain role she won`t be as attracted to him as she would have had she not needed to settle. And so her lack of baseline attraction will always make any effort from him an uphill battle. I certainly don`t see that as his fault. That would be her getting exactly what she bought.

Then there is the problem of relativity of attraction. If all couples became red pill over night and all the men became decent captains that would undoubtedly change the marriage statistics a lot. However, since women evaluate the attractiveness of their partner based on how attractive other men are and if she can get them large parts of the attractiveness boost experienced by guys at this forum disappears if everyone else becomes read pill. That will lead to many failing relationships. So no matter how good captains men as a group become a high percentage of marriages will still fail because of hypergamy. Even if every guy was like George Clooney that would happen because the Clooneys would form a dominance hierarchy and someone would end too far down. I won`t accept blame on the behalf of men for their inability to overcome a structural impossibility based on female nature.

Then there is the aspect of screening. Research on relationship failure shows very strong correlation between mental stability and relationship failure, between promiscuity and relationship failure, between future time orientation and relationship failure and many other factors. Any woman that scores poorly on any of those factors are much harder to have a successful relationship with no matter how good of a captain you are. Even very, very alpha naturals and PUAs with relationship skills to make women extremely submissive and well behaved in relationships find large groups of women extremely difficult and often impossible to have relationships with. A PUA whose posts I`ve read a lot has had a hugely successful marriage for five years. He atributes the success of that relationship to be 100% dependent on him having screened heavily for a woman with pretty much perfect relationship qualitites. He has very good game and very good relationship game and has done an awesome job as a captain but believes it would have impossible to have that kind of success with many of the women he had dated previously and had relationships of shorter duration with before. So was the past failures his fault in terms of not being a good enough captain? I`d say no as he is the same captain using the same skills. But the previous women had far less ability to bond long term and did not have the same personality characteristics conducive to a lasting relationship. The previous women that did not work out are most likely going to go from failed relationship to failed relationship and I don`t believe that is from lack of good captains.

Yes, MMSL is all about what women want from men. Screw what men want from women. It’s not like the entire forum is full of threads on how to give better BJ’s, how to be more sexually available to your husband, how to important it is to show appreciation for what he does for the family, how to make yourself into the best sexiest version of a wife possible, how to recognize and shut up your hamster, how to sit back and let your husband work on his alpha without hamster rearing up at every set back, how to practice submissive behaviors, how to be a wife that encourages and takes pleasure in her husbands leadership, how to support that leadership when life gets rough, how to encourage leadership through submission, etc. Nope. The whole thing is all about what he needs to do and letting the wife sit back and reap the benefits.
It’s not blame it on the men, it’s leaders share in blame. In every hierarchical organization ever, part of accepting the mantle of leadership is accepting that if things go wrong you carry the burden even if no action of yours directly caused failure. No one is saying that this absolves women of responsibility for their choices, no one is asking you to take responsibility for her choice. But the only person you can change is you. Recognize what you can change, and do that.

No one can force you into leadership. You don’t want it, don’t take it. But don’t take the role and then complain about the responsibility that comes with it.

I almost bought the book a couple of months ago, but something told me not to buy it. Being a devourer of books, I really could not understand …WHY NOT?

This one put it over the goal line.

If you are saying that we chose the wrong crew member for our crew and are now responsible for everything because of that choice, then I will disagree. If there were enough sane members of the female populous then yeah, it would be our fault. But there aint enough to go around, so we choose from what we got to choose from.

If you are saying we were incapable of gaming our poor choice into being a better choice and that is our fault, then you don’t know as much as you proport about the problem. Yes, all need to improve their game, but the deck has been stacked against us – good to know that your book will not change that because it is our fault anyway.

Men lead the entire world. We did not choose this group to lead and it sure aint our fault when it goes wrong. We have leadership in any relation that we have. It aint our choice and when we simply say that we don’t want it and run from it – the world don’t get better.

I would suspect that you could track the downfall from this point in the future.

Mona – two things:
1. “Yes, MMSL is all about what women want from men. Screw what men want from women. It’s not like the entire forum is full of threads on how to give better BJ’s” – you and the other FO’s here are rare birds; women that actually understand their own motivations and needs WHILE understanding what it takes for a man to fill those needs. IMO the discussions had here regarding “how to please a man” SHOULD have been occurring in families enabled by the older matriarchs passing on valuable info to the young ladies. (OK, maybe not necessarily BJ tricks, but maybe so?…)
2. “No one can force you into leadership. You don’t want it, don’t take it. But don’t take the role and then complain about the responsibility that comes with it.” – I would be 100% in agreement with you on the leadership thing IF us men were actually taught that we must lead our wives. I was given the impression the ENTIRE time I was growing up that a ‘proper’ marriage was a meeting of equals. That for me to “take the lead” was to deny my wife her own agency. That trying to impose my will on her would be sexist and chauvinistic. I can be and in fact AM a great leader for my wife and family, but ONLY because I now know it is my place and my task to do so. Much of my anger at finding MMSL was driven by the knowledge that *I* failed in my first marriage, not because I was incapable of success, but because I was systematically steered away from using the skills I posses to do so under some guise of “equal rights” and egalitarian marriage.

I take full responsibility for my failure because it WAS my fault. However, I DO NOT accept that I failed for lack of effort or will. I tried with every ounce of my soul to save my first marriage, and every single thing I did was COMPLETELY wrong because I was denied the truth. By my ex-wife, by my mother and family, and by society. I can only work with the information I have, and the truth is most of the information I had back then was complete and total horse shit.

Guys: don’t be so quick to jump on Athol for this post. The truth is it takes two to tango, and it is honestly pretty rare that one person owns the full responsibility for a divorce. No doubt it hurts a great deal to fully understand just how responsible I was in my own failure, but I’d rather live through that hurt and learn from it than to continue on in ignorance, failing over and over again. I’ll admit that I get my panties in a bunch every time I see another “man up” article somewhere, but this isn’t one of those. This is a call to arms: get your house in order before you start throwing stones! If you are here for help, the only way to get it is to be completely honest, and the best place to start is to be honest with yourself. Get pissy about it if you must. Get angry over it if it will give you motivation. But for fucks sake DO SOMETHING about it. Even if it isn’t “all your fault” you can fix it! You are THE MAN!

And screw all that nonsense about getting all the glory for being a success. Dude, if you are a success you don’t NEED to “get the glory”, you already got it! Sit back with that knowing smile and just nod to the crowd.

I do not think it really matters whose fault is at the core. A guy who wants to save his marriage will take ownership, period. If you follow a lot of Manosphere blogs, you will get the impression that all women, especially married ones, are hypergamous and ready to “jump ship” at any time. I think many leave because they are trading one fantasy for another. When a relationship sours, usually both the man and woman feel that they did not sign up for something; little or no sex, fat spouse, lazy spouse, taking one another for granted, not being a good partner etc. I wll agree with the reader’s point that most women are not bad. In fact, I believe that most married women have a high threshold of “pain” when they feel that their relationship is stalling. They do not “bolt” at the first signal of trouble, especially when kids are involved.

I also believe that yes, men must own up to their side of a relationship’s health. I think when it comes to marriage, men do not realize that most women do not think past the wedding or buying a house and having kids. Their goal is to find the guy to settle down with, create a family and obtain a level of security. I think most men (LTRs) do not think much at all about marriage; it is just extending that “good thing” they have already going with frequent sex and companionship. So, most couples are not truly prepared for what happens when they fall into a predictable “rut.” People do not think about boredom in a relationship, failed expectations and/or seeing the good, bad and ugly in their spouse after 10 years.

So, maybe guys do not realize that they have a hand in their souring relationship. So what. If they are here, they recognize that they want to fix their marriage and keep it alive and thriving and over time they will figure out what they were / were not doing that hurt it. For me, the Manosphere helped me see things clearly but, MMSL helped me take control over my marriage. Yes, there were things that I did that were hurting it. I also saw that there were things my wife was / was not doing too. Still, I felt that I had to lead and fix myself and the marriage. I am still doing that daily. The MAP is brilliant and works 100%. It will help you, but you have to want to be helped too.

Thanks for those clear, balanced thoughts, Ted D. I think you’ve clarified it well. I agree that we loyal readers (I’m more a lurker on this site, but devoured the books) shouldn’t hate on Athol for this post. He’s right, but keep reading:

To be very frank, this post is simply one of Athol’s (very) rare poorly-written missives. To me it sounds firmly rooted in indignant irritation at the dishonesty some folks have had in their communication with Athol. I wish I had the full story, but understand the privacy issue. I suspect that’s what led to this somewhat out-of-left-field tone.

If you are annoyed with this post, maybe this will balance what’s being communicated:
1) Don’t bother assigning blame. We do this not to figure out our own responsibility, but to offload as much responsibility as possible. (E.g., the continued howling at sites like Dalrock’s. I love the guy, but I swear no one on that site gets laid. So much frustration building up!)
2) Decide who you want to be. A high-value mate? Or guy/girl who sort of shows up from time to time?
3) Act that way. Might have to fake it until you assume the full identity.
4) Expect your captain/FO to respond appropriately.

That’s what I’ve done anyway. Quick stats: sex was already okay (when measured against some places in the manosphere), 2 times vaginal a week. Now: whenever, however. Averages every day, now includes blow-jobs to completion, anal exploits, and most other fun stuff people masturbate to. Wife now jills off while groping my (new) abs and biceps. I find this particularly awesome, and totally not what current culture (everything from evangelical Christianity to feminism to Everybody Loves Raymond) taught me for years.

I know you’re off WoW these days, and while I’ve never played it, I thought I’d try to hook you on my (and Mrs. DJ’s) favorite online game: League of Legends. It’s addictive, mathematically dense and rewarding, and perhaps the most widely-played e-sport in the world. Tournaments in LA, Korea, etc., have prizes in the millions of dollars.

Your daughters might already play it–the demo is pretty young (we are both 31, and likely toward the tail of the age distribution). But man, I love it, and it’s a highly-team-based bonding experience for us.

I really don’t understand where all the vitriol aimed at Athol is coming from on this one. The basic idea is pretty simple — the captain of the ship is responsible for everything that occurs on the ship.

Being captain means there are no excuses. If your men mutiny, it means that the captain failed to control them, failed to command their loyalty.

Atholi, you seen the stats. Women have committed 60%+ of the divorces for the last 100 years, before Disney, swinging etc. this post sounds like a case of I did it guys, why can’t you. Secondly men and women are flawed so eventually they will make a mistake. You are not suppose to leave your spouse because of a mistake.

For those saying most women are not bad, how many women fall into the one partner or less category that has the lowest divorce rate. Your personal opinions simply do not match up to the stats. Go read the CDC report on STD crisis, it isn’t happening because women are virgins

The FOs on the forum are “self selected and special” but OMG so are the guys! You guys act like you are ALL out there manning up and turning away from the lazy bear beta mommy syndromes you slid into, but you are not ALL doing that.

Some women are red pill aware and some men are. Stop acting like the women here are special little snowflakes who cannot possibly represent the women at large because of our impressive desire for making our husbands happy…while insisting that the red-pill-aware men ARE representative of the majority.

If my husband had found MMSL first and blundered around trying to fix things with all the beta nice guy passive aggressive insecurity bitterness crap he had buried inside him, we would be just as list as the men on here who see no progress. It took my ultimatums with the support of the forum to force him to admit to dishonesty and passive aggression and now the incredible man he really is is showing up…he is 10x the hot man i married, and our marriage is settling into a Captain/FO relationship, and he is happier and more confident than i have ever seen him.

Men are notoriously closed about their deepest failings, and those are the very toxin that is eating away at their marriage. If their wife is not forcing them to dig out the crap, they have to be willing to do it themselves. And vice versa, but plank and speck and captains first and all that.

Athol is saying that you guys need to dig out the crap before you go on a “fix the wife” 911 rampage. She can’t follow if you don’t lead. She won’t trust you if you are hiding big elephants and lying about it to yourself and everyone else.

Athol … this is the most disappointing thing I’ve ever read from you. It’s calling into question everything you’ve been trying to do here.

Yes, men must come clean with themselves about whatever they’re doing wrong. And none of us want to.

But to say most problems in marriages today are men’s fault is beyond ridiculous. Way. Beyond.

And to all the “captain of the ship” shriekers above … no man is truly captain of his house. No-one can tell a modern woman to do anything … so it is *impossible* for him to be responsible for everything in his ship. He has *no* real authority. None.

Athol, that you’ve personally been burned by men not coming clean is understandably aggravating. But to vent and rant here and blame all men in a broadest-brush-ever shreiking blog post is way out of bounds. You are better than this.

FJ34 – “The FOs on the forum are “self selected and special” but OMG so are the guys! You guys act like you are ALL out there manning up and turning away from the lazy bear beta mommy syndromes you slid into, but you are not ALL doing that”

I can’t speak for all the guys here, but I’m working my ass off, literally! Did I do it overnight? Nope. Did I jump up immediately and become the best man I can be? Hell no! That’s still a work in progress.

That being said, the FO’s here ARE “special” in that they know something the vast majority of women don’t. For that matter they guys here are special too. (We are all snowflakes!!!!) My point wasn’t to put down “blue pill” women (or men) but was directed at complaints that the women here make extra efforts to please/support/love their men. I fully believe that ALL women want to love their husbands, but unlike the vast majority that don’t understand why they don’t/can’t, the ladies here know all too well what the why and how is. And to be honest, we all share something in common here: we know what’s behind the curtain of “twu luv”, “the one”, and RomCom fantasy land. It’s a hard, sad truth for those of us that put our faith and belief in that Disney version of love, and I think it causes a lot of heartache and pain. And sometimes we take it out on each other. What bothers me the most about this thread isn’t Athol’s content or delivery, but the fact that we are starting to snark at each other. (not you and me, in a general sense) We are ALL on the same team here, and despite our pent up anger and frustration, it is important to remember the goal here is to make strong, happy marriages.

“while insisting that the red-pill-aware men ARE representative of the majority.”

I’ve never seen this anywhere on the forum, but I’ll concede that although I’ve been a follower of MMSL for going on two years, I’m only a recent forum participant. I wanted to get my head around this stuff before I started participating because I really hate feeling like the new guy. But, by and large, of the men I’ve talked to about the Red Pill here and elsewhere, all agree that Red Pill Men are a rare breed. Maybe not unicorn status, but somewhere between Waldo and Big Foot at least.

“Men are notoriously closed about their deepest failings, and those are the very toxin that is eating away at their marriage. If their wife is not forcing them to dig out the crap, they have to be willing to do it themselves”

I fully agree with this, but keep in mind that some of us (probably depending on age) were basically taught that men SHOULD NOT show emotion. We were told to push that down deep and NEVER let it see the light of day. To admit defeat is to admit failure (BS of course). Getting “in touch with our feelings” is like trying to pull teeth through an anal probe for some of us. I know it’s frustrating for FO’s seeing that glimmer of hope only to realize it will be a marathon and not a sprint.

“Athol is saying that you guys need to dig out the crap before you go on a “fix the wife” 911 rampage. “

And again I agree. But allow me to counter with two points:
1. Some men truly DO NOT realize it is THEIR OWN CRAP that is the root of the problem. They come to MMSL, rant on 911, and expect people to tell them their wife is BSC. I’m sure more than a few men have come to the horrifying conclusion that THEY are the problem well after they’d already decided it was their wife’s fault. Not an excuse, just part of the process.
2. As to my comments about “feelings” above: this is some scary stuff here! I spent almost 38 years of my life completely oblivious to an entire element of marriage, and it was literally horrifying for me to look at myself in the way you describe with “dig out the crap”. And every damn time I dug something up, it brought more crap to the surface. For MONTHS I felt like every day I found a new flaw to be fixed. A new quirk to be changed. A new “Nice Guy” behavior I didn’t even know I was projecting. Again, not an excuse, but part of the process.

I feel anger and bitterness insome of the posts here. I get it, and truthfully I have my moments of it as well still. (thankfully less and less as I keep on MAPping) But please people, keep your eye on the prize. This is heavy duty, life changing stuff. It won’t happen in a day, a week, or maybe a year. But it can happen with constant vigilance and forward movement. Even if you only manage to move forward an inch, you’re still further ahead than you were yesterday.

Sorry for the long rant. It’s Friday, and I just got over the worst cold I’ve had in years. I’m feeling human again and generally positive today, and I’d like to see other people enjoying life as well. Funny thing about my MAP, the further along I get, the more I want to share it with others. I’ve never been the type of person to feel the urge to help people, but by damn Athol is slowly turning me into a convert.

@FJ34: Many of us men are working the manning up path. It’s not as easy as some folks think (i’m sure you know this btw) But Congratulations on your happy results, sincerely. You must have a special kind of patience to lead someone else into leading without ended up the leader yourself . You are the type of woman that every man hopes to marry. And your story represents what is good about marrying the right person.

@Athol. I get what you are saying now, and this makes much sense. I am still going to disagree with you that everything is the man’s fault. Every argument and failed relationship has blame O plenty to go around. The man does not deserve it all always.

I will certainly agree that if some dude is coming to you begging for your help in saving his marriage and he elects to withhold information, he is beyond being an idiot and deserves all the scorn that you could heep upon him.

Now if the churches that marry people would hand out your book as an owners manual to all the men, and the man willfully chose to ignore the advice, then yep, I would fully agree that the failed marriage is the guy’s fault. But men go into marriage no knowing they are supposed to be the captain.

Regardless of my disagreement over this post, Athol still deserves the MVP award for saving so many marriages and for blazing a red pill trail that so many men and women have followed to success. For what it’s worth Athol, don’t let situations like you are writing about stop you from sharing your unique talent with the rest of us.

Its true, you cannot FORCE a woman to do anything. But if you have to use force, you’ve already failed. I am the captain of my house whether my wife likes it or not. It doesn’t matter if she wants my leadership, she signed on for it when she said “I Do”. The key to success is to find ways to make her not only comfortable with my leadership, but to actually want/crave/need it. It certainly isn’t an easy task, but most things in life worth having don’t come easy anyway.

“Athol, that you’ve personally been burned by men not coming clean is understandably aggravating. But to vent and rant here and blame all men in a broadest-brush-ever shreiking blog post is way out of bounds. You are better than this.”

It’s bigger than Athol being burned by lack of info. This really is a general male attitude problem. The vast majority of “blue pill” men simply DO NOT understand the role of leadership, because by and large we were raised to believe in equality and fairness for all. Well guess what? Life ain’t fair or equal. You want happiness? Then you have to MAKE happiness. Do all women want to be the FO? Probably not. But I still believe that most if not all women want to love their husbands, and if indeed those husbands are supposed to be leading, then THEY are the ones that need to show those wives how to love. And in return, she’ll teach him a thing or two about love as well. It isn’t supposed to be a tug of war, it’s supposed to be a tango. We’ve all just lost the art of the dance.

I’m gonna need to stop all this positive talk, or I’ll need to kick a puppy soon so I don’t feel like such a wuss. Yeah, like beating a puppy will make me feel manly. *rolls eyes* I gotta get off these cold meds…

@Joe Commentor – Regardless of my disagreement over this post, Athol still deserves the MVP award for saving so many marriages and for blazing a red pill trail that so many men and women have followed to success. For what it’s worth Athol, don’t let situations like you are writing about stop you from sharing your unique talent with the rest of us.

Thanks.
Here’s the thing though… the situation I’m writing about happens over and over and over again. This is a routine problem in fixing marriages. Trust me, I’ve been forced into this situation over and over again.

Joe – I’m trying brother, I’m trying. Today is a particularly good attitude day for me, but I’m happy to say I’m having more of those and less of the angry ones on the regular. I could go back through my emails from when I first found MMSL and show you how much doubt I had that this would ever work. And my situation wasn’t bad to start with since I was post divorce and just starting a new relationship. It was almost divine intervention that brought me here just when I needed it to keep from heading down that same path.

I hate that this is such a painful process for husband AND wives to deal with. If this could actually be put into a little red pill that could be prescribed by a doctor, Athol would still be a nurse.

But honestly I don’t know that anyone would even appreciate it if it was that simple. But getting out of the slump and seeing those first small signs of improvement is a shot to the system that gets the ball rolling. Yeah, when I fail I get angry and bitter. Difference now from before is that when it happens, I get angry, I get over it, and I move on. You only have to parse the forum to see all isn’t sunshine and rainbows in my life. But that’s just fine, because the storm clouds remind me of why I’m working so hard, and when the sun comes out again, that warmth feels awesome.

And do me a favor: don’t go spreading around that I’m compassionate. It’ll ruin my reputation.

Then you should have left out this sentence:
“The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.”

Because it is utterly and completely wrong. And it does not help anyone with anything. It just gives all the I’m unhaaaaaapy, entitlement princesss, sexless wives an excuse to do nothing and not own up to their own problems. Which is *exactly* what you’re accusing the men of.

Athol, it appears you’ve become cynical and lost perspective and balance. Perhaps a break from this would do you good.

Michael – “What if she decides she doesn’t want it and certainly doesn’t want to be obligated to have sex with you?”
“By Athol’s rant and your rationalization, you’re still to blame. Somehow. Bollocks.”

Do you want me to give you some kind of fix for an answer? Because the real answer is simply this: if she doesn’t want to be “obligated” to have sex with me, and doesn’t want my leadership, then she is on the wrong ship. I can’t change that, only she can. All I can do is be the best I can, and if that isn’t good enough for her, so be it. It sucks like mad hell, but it’s the only truth I came to after 12 years of marriage followed by a divorce.

And if a woman married you showing any signs of real love, attraction, and affection, and there are no medical problems in the way yet she is losing attraction to/for you, well, you’re doing something wrong. *shrug* I’ve been there done that, so I hope you don’t think I’m preaching from a high horse here.

“And all your bragging about your supreme captaincy won’t change it.”

With all due respect, I don’t brag. And FWIW I don’t consider myself even close to “supreme”. I’m just a guy trying to live my life and enjoy it while it lasts. You CAN NOT make another person do or feel anything without some amount of willingness from them. Full stop. If she isn’t willing, she isn’t coming along no matter where you go. So the question then becomes: do you simply give up going where you want, or do you just keep on sailing without her?

I wish I could say otherwise, but as Athol points out, sometimes a marriage just can’t be fixed. But if it were me, I’d want to walk away knowing I gave it everything I had. What sucks is I DID give everything the first time around, but I was giving all the wrong stuff. Nothing worse than realizing I was spinning my wheels with all my might in a pit full of mud, and all that effort simply buried me further.

@Ted D “… and doesn’t want my leadership, then she is on the wrong ship. I can’t change that, only she can. All I can do is be the best I can, and if that isn’t good enough for her, so be it.”

Thank you kind sir, for making my point for me so eloquently.

“What sucks is I DID give everything the first time around, but I was giving all the wrong stuff. Nothing worse than realizing I was spinning my wheels with all my might in a pit full of mud, and all that effort simply buried me further.”

Once again, thanks again for making my point and for dis-proving Athol’s point. Sometimes (often) the woman is really bad at-fault and all the blaming of men won’t change that sad fact.

To add to the observations of Joe and Ted, I have to say: Sorry, dude, I’ve analyzed the holy fuck out of myself and everything I’ve done for years, to no avail. It wasn’t until I read MMSL that I realized my criteria were totally wrong-headed and that the awful suspicion I had since 16 about the truth of gender roles was more true than I’d ever wondered. It not only wasn’t my fault, I have decades of recorded attempts to do the right thing in every particular. Little did I know that the few times any advice hit on the right things to fix, it was only to drive me the wrong direction. My doing, yes; my fault, no.

On the up side, at least if I ever ask advice (which, like Ted, I’ve been reluctant to do), it’ll be guaranteed elephant-free.

Ted D- Nice job of reframing when you said “Guys: don’t be so quick to jump on Athol for this post. The truth is it takes two to tango, and it is honestly pretty rare that one person owns the full responsibility for a divorce.”

BUT that is not what Athol said. What he said was “The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.”

Your statement strikes me as well reasoned, mature and difficult to argue with (not that I would argue with it, since I agree with it).

Athol’s statement strikes me as a petulant over generalization triggered by anger.

I’ve been giving advice and guidance (not of a personal nature) professionally for 31 years. One of the first (and one of the most difficult) things I learned is that people will routinely leave out vital information when seeking advice. Sometimes it is on purpose (in an attempt to make themselves look better) and sometimes it is unintentional (didn’t think it was relevant or important). I knew that I was really becoming a professional once I had a few years under my belt and stopped taking it personally.

That allowed me to drop the whole mind set of “It’s not my fault I gave your crappy advice. It’s your fault since you didn’t tell me about ____________” I stopped taking it as a personal slight and acknowledged that It was very much a defense mechanism about my own failure to ask the right questions at the right time.. My own little rationalization hamster.

As Willie alluded to (and it is not just for people in recovery) this omission of vital facts is pretty much par for the course and I strongly believe that if someone who wants to provide counsel and advice can’t accept this and structure their advice accordingly they shouldn’t be providing that advice until they learn how to accept and handle it.

“Once again, thanks again for making my point and for dis-proving Athol’s point. Sometimes (often) the woman is really bad at-fault and all the blaming of men won’t change that sad fact.”

I suppose it’s your POV, but like I said, I fully took the responsibility for my failed marriage on because *I* couldn’t fix it. It was my fault for not knowing what I should have. Just like ignorance of the law won’t keep you out of jail, ignorance of how marriage works won’t keep you out of divorce court. Sure, I could look back and blame it all on my ex because she didn’t tell me how to fix it. But the truth is, she didn’t know either. And what good would it do me to pin the blame anywhere but on my own head? Being angry that I screwed up is what got me to lose weight to get in shape (still very much a work in progress), get a new job, and turn my downward spiral into a takeoff.

No matter what angle you view it from, it’s the same smelly turd. At the end of the day, it was better for me and my family to simply accept my failures and move on. Maybe that doesn’t work for everyone, maybe it only worked for me. All I can say is, I hardly recognize the man I am today from the guy I was facing a separation and eventual divorce. I can’t even say I love everything about the “new” me, but its hard to argue with positive results. And I didn’t have to sell my soul to the devil to have a wife at home that wants to be with me, and enjoys sharing physical intimacy with me. That is about as drastic a change as I could have hoped for after spending almost 5 years in a sexless marriage. (Full disclosure, it was really only totally sexless for the last year or so. I managed to get ovulation sex out of my ex every other month or so…)

I’m truly not trying to blow sunshine up anyone’s ass here. I swear to you I’ve been exactly where you are mentally on this. I spent about 6 months after first finding MMSL denying my part in my first marriage’s demise. Thing is, as long as I kept pushing the blame elsewhere, I wasn’t making any sort of progress. I had to let go of the anger and resentment, accept my failure, and move on. I sincerely hope everyone here can find their own path. But I have doubt that any journey based on such a misdirection of blame can end in a good place.

Look at it this way: Here in PA we have no-fault car insurance. That is, in most cases, any car accident is written off as “no fault” and each driver’s insurance covers their own costs. So, that means even if I was totally in the right and someone hits me, there is a fair chance I’m taking half the blame. I can rant and rave about it and have no car, or I can pay my deductible, get it repaired, and keep on trucking. I decided I wanted to get moving again, so I paid the deductible.

You column reminds me of the great (now deceased) radio therapist and author David Viscott M.D. He’d sometimes say to his callers “Where’s the lie?” when he sensed something big was being left out of the story. He’d also say that statement when talking about the process of self-analysis — ask yourself, “Where’s the lie?” In general, he concurred with your drift, which is that when there is a problem, there is frequently an underlying lie (sometimes to others; sometimes a self-delusion) — and it was was the job of the therapist to perform invasive surgical confrontation with the lying client.

“BUT that is not what Athol said. What he said was “The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.””

Well from a certain perspective I can agree though. If men AND women don’t have a clue how to get this right, someone has to make the first step. If men are supposed to be the leader in their marriages, then BY DEFAULT any failure falls to him. If you believe in the captain/FO relationship, there is no other way to see this.

Is it fair? Not in the least. But, if I had to choose who is more responsible for the failure rate of marriage today, I’d have to say it is indeed men. Not to say any of us made the choice to fail, but that if blame MUST be assigned, it always falls to whoever was in charge. Usually the end result is someone getting fired.

Also I tried to cut Athol some slack here. I can’t even imagine how absolutely frustrating it must be to run this operation. Day after day of people coming to you with horrific situations. The feeling of helplessness when things can’t be fixed. And then to find out that many of those people weren’t even honest with themselves or him when they asked for help? To me that is a kick in the ass, and frankly I don’t blame him for being a little pissed off. I’m just going to write this one off as the need to vent, and a warning to anyone coming here for help: Don’t expect anyone to fix your problems if you can’t even admit what they are.

@Ted D “I’m truly not trying to blow sunshine up anyone’s ass here. I swear to you I’ve been exactly where you are mentally on this. I spent about 6 months after first finding MMSL denying my part in my first marriage’s demise.”

Good grief! Who made you my counselor and conscience?. You know nothing about me. Except that I’m a guy that sees things as they really are and in almost all relationship problems there is plenty of blame to go around. That I should have to tutor you or Athol on such is the bewildering part. Athol is now spreading a lie, and as one of his fans I’m just really not thrilled about it.

This isn’t about me, poseur.

Actually for a “fan” you’re never commented on a post before this one.

Damn, a lot of passive-aggressive stamping of the feet here. I think usually there is fault on both sides. The blue pill gives us the wrong information to fix our marriages, but the point is men not acting like a man needs to do to stay married is his fault. Is society to blame for blue pill programming? Sure, but you are at fault for not seeing it or doing anything about it.

I’ve largely blown up my marriage. My wife has her issues I could bitch about all day, but until I fix my (more severe) issues it is pointless to work on her very much (exception: fitness testing). The point Athol made doesn’t apply to all divorces – I’ve know plenty of cheating, unhaaaappppy walkaway wives. You may be an exception. But, you may also have had a degree of failure there you don’t want to look at.

And I think the point Athol is making is that men tend to minimize or miss their severe issues. A reverse-feminism (men good, women bad) really won’t work any better than feminism did.

Willie. I don’t agree ‘that MEN tend to minimize or miss their severe issues”.

I would agree that PEOPLE tend to minimize or miss their severe issues.

see it pretty much every day in my practice (which is completely unrelated to marriage or psychology). In my 31 years of observing this phenomena, I’ve never seen the slightest hint that this tendency is more prevalent in either men or women.

Playing the blame game by making statements like “The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.” indicates a presupposition that I find extremely slanted and disturbing.

Woa, very intense post&comments. You are really putting yourself out there Athol. But it is true, you have to focus on the people who are trying to do something to move forward, can’t really do much for those who are just hurting without wanting to move anywhere.

I’ve seen MMSL do great for a lot of guys (in the forum) so I know Athol is on the side of men.

Yes, there are women who are BatShitCrazy and in those cases, Athol has not encouraged the husband to stay with them. Athol has always said the MAP will not work on a BSC spouse. But this post highlights the fact that the husband understanding how he got himself into a bad marriage situation in the first place is pivotal to the husband taking the reins of his life again.

I do agree with this: “My doing, yes; my fault, no.” because sometimes guys (or girls!) cannot help how they were raised. So it is not necessarily their fault if they didn’t know better, but yes, it is still our doing, and our fixing.

And thank God (or love-deity of your choice) for that! I’m fixing as fast as I can, noticing the (maddeningly slight) cues from her regarding the correctness of the new direction, including parts of it yet to be implemented, and sticking to the MAP as best as I can. She’s no nutter, so I’m confident this will be another for the Success column; but even if it isn’t, I’ll be a version of myself far, far closer to what I’m supposed to be. And these mistakes shall not happen again.

Something to consider as well, what is the ratio of men and women seeking help? I could see that there might be more men asking for advice as Athol’s blog is linked with the manosphere. So, it’s possible that he’s encountering more men, and thus a a skewed number of men who have caused problems in their marriage.

I suspect that part of the issue for many of us is that we were not acting as ‘captains’ when we got married. We didn’t expect to be. Probably we were on a path for disaster already, but things hadn’t collapsed yet. That happened later.

Had we behaved as captains from the start, would we have gotten married? If the answer is yes, there’s hope, but many are probably married to women who are emotionally miserable if they are NOT with a captain, but intellectually unwilling to follow one.

Maybe a silly suggestion, but the fact that elephant-in-the-room things being dealt with, finally, could also be a result of a man suddenly starting to own up to his shit and getting this relationship thing sorted out. It’s not so much the critical neglect at one venture that destroys the relationship, but the sustained low-effort / failure to own up to your shit that chips away at it.

Untill they reach that turning point, start fixing their lives and taking responsibility for both the past and the present. The elephant in the room is just the indicator of the underlying problem.

One spin-off thought from Athol’s great post: How representative of the general population is Athol’s clientele? It may be that the kind of guy who doesn’t man up and take care of business when it presents itself, instead playing the blame and/or denial game, winds up presenting his long-term problems to Athol . It may well be that Athol is like a cop whose sampling of humanity is different than the average person’s.

Much respect, Athol, and I can only imagine how supremely irritating it must be for you to have to deal with the Elephant in the Room. Though if I would known it was going to be all my fault for “I’m unhaaaaaaaaapy” and thus the kiddies would only be happy if she was haaaaaaaaapy, then I wouldn’t have signed up for it, though it seems I am accountable for thinking she was different from her bipolar mum, my in-laws crap relationship, irregular menstrual flows and demonstrated entitlement issues. If I fostered this because I thought this was the woman I would spend the rest of my days with, then I’m guilty. All I know is that I was once a white liberal who believed NAWALT. Let’s just say now I’m not. And there ain’t no porn addiction, gambling debts, sex dressed up as furry animals, drug use, physical abuse or jail time for defrauding pensioners. You’re the man and you’re great but when we were actually working on things (just back off the brink but still dodgy), I played her one of her favorite U2 songs on the keyboard which she always swooned for…..and I got, “Why don’t you learn some new band’s stuff?” And needless to say, I suppose to the female hamster that paled in comparison to some Hallmark card she had just scrawled her name to…

This is a HUGE problem I’ve had with the manosphere. I’m not in the business of giving advice, but I’ve watched marriages fall apart and a lot of the time I can connect it to something he is doing. Judging by most people in the ‘sphere, it’s never the man’s fault. It’s just women and the ease of getting a divorce. Sorry, but bullshit.

Women can have issues with an overbearing mother-in-law, too, women can need sexual fulfillment, etc. Most people in a stable relationship won’t blow it up for no good reason. Ex-wives don’t have a crazy switch that just turns on and she decides to start fucking the pool boy and taking all of your stuff. If she was stable for most of the relationship… sorry, I just don’t buy that one day she turned into a crazy vindictive whore, any more than I believe that about a guy suddenly turning into a cheating, emotionally abusive douche.

If you get into a relationship that starts with a crazy person, though — you shouldn’t be surprised when that crazy turns on YOU.

“I think Athol is trying to say that husbands and/or wives may bear direct responsibilty for their actions…but the man alone bears ultimate responsibility for what happens in the marriage.”

Yes, the man is the Captain. That’s the method Athol preaches. The Captain is ultimately responsible for his ship (in this case, the relation-ship har har har). If there is a problem he has to address it. That’s just expected. If you don’t address it (the ED example*, for example), and the wife is telling you about it – yes, YOU are the cause. That said, if you have a problem SHE won’t fix — well, the Captain chooses his crew. So if you put up with shit that’s your doing, too. If you accept the role as Captain then you also accept the responsibility. Keep your crew satiated or expect mutiny, and if your crew can’t maintain the ship replace them.

Yes, if the woman cheats, she’s responsible for her own actions there. But the man had the chance to prevent it by giving her some deep dicking. And if she cheats with a guy they had a threeway with… well what the hell did you think was going to happen? You just slapped your cock on the ruler next to his. You better fucking hope he’s not as good/well-endowed because what do you THINK is going to happen?

* I had a friend, who had a boyfriend who could not get and maintain. He had low-T (in his 20s) and REFUSED to do anything about it because he didn’t want to “change himself.”** So what did she do? She was in her 20s. She found a guy who could get, and maintain. Why should she sign on to a life without sexual enjoyment because he doesn’t want to “change himself”? If my wife couldn’t get me off and all it took was a PILL to fix the problem… well, to quote Ron White, “I’m a pretty loyal dog but if you don’t pet me every once in a while it gets hard to keep me under the porch.”

** This guy was also probably the single most annoying human being I’ve ever encountered that didn’t currently have on a pair of fake cat ears.

I believe Athol is talking about taking the sort of mindset that is most effective in achieving good outcomes. Typically he is very blunt, but as my soul-twin Billy says, with men you must be blatent rather than overly polite. Billy’s advice has been very helpful to me when talking to men.

I intrepret that Athol is advocating taking responsibility rather than saying men are wholly to “blame”.
My experience has been that “taking responsibility” rather than “taking the blame” for something is the foundation of empowerment. Personally I am not interested in apportioning blame, but in solving the problem. Likewise, being a victim might get one attention, but is pretty useless in solving a problem.

Since many people may not realise what they are doing is causing them a problem through their influence on their spouse, perhaps Athol you could use a checklist to prompt their full disclosure? Don’t get put off by people blaming you for poor advice when they did not disclose important facts – I am sure you gave the best advice based on the information at hand.

Well, to tell a blue pill guy that he has responsiblity because he is the Captain deserves the reply that he isn’t. (I agree Atholis blowing off steam about being asked advice without hearing the truth.) However, I know I had past relationshps blow up and would have not told anyone I asked for advice about the Elephant, because I thought the problem was completely different. An example is aformer girlfriend who (years later when she was married with children) tole me she didn’t marry me because I didn’t have sex with her one Thanksgiving. I would have said the problem was she diidn’t fine me attractive, based on her refusing repeated marriage proposals the previous summer.

“many are probably married to women who are emotionally miserable if they are NOT with a captain, but intellectually unwilling to follow one.”

+1. And it’s mutual maturity. Athol can get deserved kudos for telling guys to own it. All I see, and I’m willing to be enlightened, is to see what turns the light on for women. Which is greater in the popular culture: “I don’t need a man” versus “I don’t need a woman”. All you have to do is youtube the Chris Rock bit that “women are never happy” and it’s either the Captain that breaks the butterfly on the wheel or Life after she gets the divorce and then wonders why…wait for it…..she’s not haaaaaaaaapy.

A PUA whose posts I`ve read a lot has had a hugely successful marriage for five years. He atributes the success of that relationship to be 100% dependent on him having screened heavily for a woman with pretty much perfect relationship qualitites.

>>> @Michael: “But to say most problems in marriages today are men’s fault is beyond ridiculous. Way. Beyond.”
>>> “I’m a guy that sees things as they really are and in almost all relationship problems there is plenty of blame to go around. ”

Let’s say you’ve managed to stick to your guns, and assigned blame, and as you wanted, it’s partly on the woman, partly on the man.

Great, Michael. How does it feel, now that blame has been assigned?

More importantly, what do you do now? How does blame-assigning get you a single inch closer to a better life?

@Altus says: “All of the blame-casting you insist on doing is completely meaningless. It’s not only a waste of time, but is actively interfering with the work you should be focusing on to achieve your goals.”

And why, pray thee tell, are you asking me this question? Athol is the one who decided the blame game is how to handle things. I’ve known for years that blame is fruitless because, among other things, there is always plenty to go around.

Athol is the one who decided that always blaming men is somehow productive. I’m just really disappointed because I thought he was better and more sensible than that. Now his advice will always be suspect because he has revealed a bias (based in nothing more fruitful than raw anger, no less) that will severely compromise his ability to help the very men and marriages he claims to want to help.

I can relate to what Athol’s saying. A couple I’ve known for a long time divorced recently. During the breakup, their friends tried to convince them to stay together, work it out. It looked like the wife was being unreasonable. There didn’t appear to be anything wrong, other she was vaguely unhaaaapy and wouldn’t say why exactly.

During the separation, the truth came out. Her husband (who’s 16 years older) has had erectile dysfunction for 12 years, and he refuses to do anything about it. He think oral is gross, too. Basically, he thinks that providing her with a home is all he’s required to do. Somehow he missed the the idea that marriage involves sex. He says that his ex was too demanding and the divorce just came out of the blue. He had 12 years of his wife begging him for sex and he can’t figure out why he’s divorced. He still won’t go to the doctor, either.

If only one of them had fessed up about this problem before the divorce. They were too embarrassed to discuss this, even with their closest friends. Now their marriage is over and those of us who tried to talk them out of it feel like we wasted our time. You can’t solve a problem if you don’t even know what it is.

How in Hell can any of you get up on high horses moaning and wailing when Athol states the obvious?

It’s so damn obvious that you can’t escape it if you give it a nanosecond’s thought.

The MAP works (and we know it does) because _you_ take responsibility for your actions and their consequences. That’s the only fix when _you_ broke your shit.

This is why our FUCKING GODDAMN HERO (TM) tells each and every one of us to be the best man you can be. The best man you can be owns and fixes his shit. Period. There is no way you can be the best man you can be if you are hiding from your mistakes. It’s like a cat trying to cover up shitting in the kitchen by shredding the linoleum.

Athol’s the guy who boldly states that if you want to make your marriage work, _you_ have to be the agent that makes it work. If _you_ don’t put in the time, energy, and brains to make it work, how the hell do you expect your marriage to work? If _you_ didn’t put in the time, energy, and brains then _who_ is to blame when your marriage didn’t work? Wait for it… wait for it… it’s YOU!

You come to him after you’ve failed. She’s set the ticking time bomb and you decide to call on a genius bomb expert. Our bomb expert takes you seriously when you tell him, “Looks like the crazy bitch decided to blow some shit up!” After the bomb hits the ignition sequence in Disneyland, then and _only_ then do you tell him, “Yeah, I might have bought her the explosive dildo and the Mickey Mouse costume.” So let’s blame our bomb expert for getting frustrated with people who are more concerned with their egos than with their relationships when they call on him for relationship advice.

Our bomb expert is tired of being fed a steady diet of lies. How many of you want to _know_ that the next serious investment of your time is likely based on a lie (explicit or of omission)? Nobody? How not surprising.

I’m going to go for the paraphrase of the take-away. If you broke it, it’s your fault. If you could have fixed it and didn’t, it’s your fault. If you lie to the guy who’s only trying to help, IT’S YOUR FAULT.

“There are unquestionably a very small percentage of women who are evil, bait and switch golddigging cunts, who deserve to experience a poorly skilled plastic surgeon. ”

Jeez, Athol, I think there’s possibly a sizable amount of territory between the woman being an an evil cunt and everything being the man’s fault?

The spouse who wants sex less controls the relationship. This is pretty much a truism. Man goes beta, wife gets bored, sex suffers, man reads Athol’s book … and what remains is a control issue. No one is “evil.” The wife comes to want sex more, but on some level she doesn’t want to cede control. This was my story; is it really all that rare?

What’s this? Athol points out that sometimes a man can be at least partially at fault for a failure of a relationship? That his previous actions might have an impact on the means to repair the damage? That maybe, just maybe, *clutch pearls* a man’s actions might actually be TRIGGERING his wife’s behaviors?

But I can lead with “Everything is the man’s fault” and that’s okay? Wouldn’t that drive 60% of my male readers away?

They may be readers, but they’re not your audience Athol. Plenty of examples already in the comments, I come across these guys in the MRM a lot. Everything is someone else’s fault. Women are “unmarriageable.” Hypergamy. Family Courts. Push ‘em far enough and it’ll probably be fluoride in the water causing their ED…

They are what Vox Day calls Gammas, and they’re not interested in doing what it takes to have better relationships. I no longer feel bad about calling them out on this, because I think it helps serve as a good example of what not to do for other men. If you want to believe it all someone else’s fault and there’s nothing you could have done differently, then you also have to believe that you’re doomed and can never have anything better, and probably can’t even keep whatever happiness you have.

Well, that would suck.

If you want to believe you can have better than what you’ve had, then you must believe that you are in control, that your decisions and actions are more important than anyone else’s in driving your own happiness. Sure, there are no guarantees and bad luck can still happen, or you could even just come of short and fail. But you can’t succeed if you don’t take that chance. Nobody can win if they don’t risk losing. Confronting adversity with a plan and a smile is what being a man is all the hell about.

Athol, you’re not doing anything other than telling guys that you have to be a man if you want to get a woman. If someone doesn’t want to listen to that, I don’t think you or I have much to say to them.

If a woman gets “accidentally pregnant” and decided the whole future of a man’s life without his permission, then that is a problem. Generally, people who talk about the “blame game” being pointless intend to act in a manner that is completely insane and intend to continue to say things that are completely insane.

Altus said:
More importantly, what do you do now? How does blame-assigning get you a single inch closer to a better life?

It gives me a list of people to avoid and whose opinions I should at all times ignore. That would include Altus.

Reading comprehension involves using the entire context and not just individual words or sentences in determining meaning. The word “blame” here relates not just to the marriage problems but to the context of this post, the process of solving those problems. If a man says he wants to fix a marriage, there is an assumption that he will be addressing the actual problems. When he doesn’t do that he is absolutely to blame that the problems don’t get fixed, not because he necessary caused the problems but because he failed to address them and do what he could to repair. It is frequently the case that a problem which appears to originate in the woman can be fixed by the husband, which is good news for husbands who want to save their marriages without much effort from the wife. But to say one is seeking help while simultaneously denying or hiding the underlying issues is to lie about really wanting to fix the marriage. What can a counselor do to change the behavior of the spouse NOT seeking help? Nothing, obviously.

I see this same sort of thing on women’s forums. When an older, wiser wife suggests things the younger wives can do to make their marriages great, the younger women will whine about how the older women are giving a pass to the evil husbands. But the fact is, the so-called evil husband isn’t coming to the older women looking for advice! If YOU are coming for advice, then the advice given is going to be aimed at you. It doesn’t mean the other party has no fault, it just means that by seeking help you are taking responsibility for the problems and your failure to do so honestly will result in you carrying the blame for not even addressing the real problem.

Fault implies blame, but it also implies the power to change the relationship. If the failure of most relationships is the fault of women, that means that men are weak, unable to affect the interactions they have with even a single person. Do we really think men are that weak? Incapable? Paradoxically, the one in the relationship who can only blame the other person and accepts no responsibility probably is the source of the problem. Accepting your role in the problems in a marriage is the only way to create change. Otherwise you’re just a victim or a martyr…whether you’re a man or a woman.

I stopped reading at misty dad’s comment. Labeling hypergamy as irrational when it’s perfectly rational (not moral or a display of good character, but still an adaptive and useful strategy in the sexual market) is the exact attitude a whiny person (man or woman) would use to justify not owning up to their wrongs. This comment session should read as a list of our elephants, not an effort in destablishing what Athol said.
I, therefore, am putting it out there: my elephant is that I gained a lot of weight. I whined like all hell about it, but am actively getting rid of it. I cannot expect my long-term boyfriend to make an effort for me (i. e. alpha up) if it’s not easy for me to find another man quickly if/when we separate.

And Athol, don’t worry about the lost readership: the ones who stay will be the ones applying the knowledge you and Jennifer so generously share with us. I learned that with Ramit Sethi’s e-mails (personal finance writer/consultant) and it will prove to be true in your case.

Captains are responsible for the ship. It is what it is. This isn’t anything different than he’s been saying this whole time, but when it’s put in black and white, there’s wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Michael: “Now his advice will always be suspect because he has revealed a bias (based in nothing more fruitful than raw anger, no less) that will severely compromise his ability to help the very men and marriages he claims to want to help.”

Who are you, his agent? His manager? The PR coordinator for the male gender?

Jesus, you are a whiny bitch. If you are so genuinely concerned about the “message” that (in your opinion) ought to be disseminated to the males of America, and you think that Athol Kay is doing a sub-optimal job, then …

… wait for it …

IT’S UP TO YOU to go out there, write a book and/or a blog that captures the attention of thousands of men, blasts through the mainstream media like a wildfire, and pours your ideas of pro-male wisdom like honey into all our ears.

But, no, you are satisfied to be a random commenter on HIS blog, and spend your time wagging your finger at him (and us) about what you think that HE should be saying and not saying.

When guys come to me for help, I always address their high reward behaviors first and foremost. I now have a “cheat sheet” of over 150 high reward behaviors that affect their ability to lead in all their relationships (friends, family, business, sex/love). 150 *common* behaviors that are “addicting”.

Most of them are either socially acceptable, or socially common behaviors. Few are hardcore “addictions” that most people would criticize or judge.

Without a doubt, the Elephant in the Room is probably on my list. It’s amazing how easy it is to love and lead a woman when you’re not tied down to an addiction that makes you “super happy” when you’re doing it costantly.

I was too busy to comment on this earlier. I’m glad you brought this up.

Based on my own experience, I had come to this conclusion myself. I said a variation of this in my introduction at your forums:

“What I hope to convey is my belief, based on my own experience, that as long as your wife is still physically and emotionally faithful to you, even if she loathes your beta-tude to the core, it is possible to make her fall deeply in love with you all over again. But even if you don’t, you will have so improved yourself in the process that you will have absolutely no problem finding another, more worthy, woman.”

Even if women should be more responsible for their bad behavior, it doesn’t matter, because men can do something about it regardless. And because women are reactive by nature, whether or not the bad behavior is acceptable, it is often in reaction to undesirable behavior in her man (and 100% supplicating beta is very bad behavior).

A few people commented that my wife sounded like a monster, the way I described her. In some ways, she really was. But, and here’s the kicker, I CREATED that monster. I have since slain it too, by first slaying the behavior that gave rise to it. It took effort. Slaying monsters is not a job for amateurs, you know.

I see the commenters’ rage as very similar as the feminists’ rage over “victim blaming”
“How dare you suggest, that a girl should not get blind drunk with a sleazy guy, who has been making inappropriate jokes to her for 6 months and than going to his appartment “for a drink”! You must think that she’s been asking for it! You are excusing the rapist! YOU ARE VICTIM BLAMING!”

Ugh…
No, I am not excusing the rapist – the legal system will take care of him.
But yes, I am blaming the victim. Because being a victim does not mean that you ceased being an actor in life, it does not mean that your actions influence your outcomes – at least in some way. So get your big boy/girl pants on, go through your past shit and see, what you could have done differently to protect yourself in the future.

Athol, you treat other people’s problems like an adult treating adults, and for that I applaud you.
It’s a rare thing to see nowadays indeed.

Michael says:
February 15, 2013 at 2:47 pm
If I want to read some feminist drivel about how it’s all men’s fault, I’ll just cruise over to HuffPo. Surely we expect something more square with the facts here.

Really, Michael?
Typical “feminist drivel”: Men are at fault when they act naturally because men are naturally rapists, thugs, and exploiters of women (with marriage being the most common way of enslaving and exploiting women).

Professor Kay (or something close to what Professor Kay is trying to get across): Men are at fault for problems in their relationships when they do not act as men naturally should. If men do not assume their natural role as Captain, their partners will not act naturally as First Officers. Pain follows.

The “feminist drivel” and Professor Kay’s ideas are not the same. They are direct opposites.

“The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.”

I wish people would stop reframing and rephrasing what was said, and just state whether or not they agree or disagree with that statement.

I would have the same issues if someone posted

“The core problem in the relationship is almost always the woman’s fault.”

I could give hundreds of egregious examples illustrating the danger of this type of thinking merely by substituting any number of distinct groups of people (African-americans, Jews, Bald male nurses, etc) for “men” and any number of problems (economy, crime etc) for relationships, but I won’t go there.

Athol is presupposing that millions of men are at fault simply because they are

1) Men
2) In an unhappy relationship.

To me that shows a deeply held bias if not outright prejudice.

Put aside the rationalizations and rephrasing. Do you believe “The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.” and if so what causes you to label millions of individuals in that manner?

The “bias” arises because in a sexual relationship, the man and the woman are not equal. Their roles are asymmetrical. They are complementary, not identical.

This is called “leadership.” The man is the leader. The woman is the follower.

Even when your woman is 100% in the wrong, the man is still 100% responsible for (a) having made a poor choice in selecting her, and (b) responding to to unacceptable behavior by either correcting it or replacing her.

It’s up to you. It’s always up to you.

There’s no scenario you can present where that basic principle will be inapplicable.

I’d just like to point out the vast difference between:
a) “men should take responsibility; own the problem”
b) “it’s all men’s fault”

The first is excellent proven advice. You could never go wrong with it. Athol should (and does) shout it from the housetop.

The second is just a falsehood.

Absolutely. The problem is, well, it’s really more like this:

a) It’s all women’s fault
b) men should take responsibility and own the problems
c) it’s all men’s fault.

There’s a certain category of men who don’t want to take responsibility and have a mental block to hearing option B. They can only hear A or C, and if you aren’t saying “it’s all women’s fault” then you must be saying “it’s al men’s fault.”

But I also think that sentence
“The core problem in the relationship is almost always the mans fault.”
came out a bit differently than it was intended. If I get it hit by a car, and becomee quadriplegic, and the lack of income I bring, the lack of physical support around I can give around the house, the lack of sex I can give my (future, I’m not married yet) wife becomes a core problem in the relationship, does that make it ultimately my fault?

I understand that I used a bit of a hyperbole here. But there are things in life that can break a man’s life that aren’t in the control of a single man. I’m not saying this knowledge should make you just crawl up in fetal position and stop you from becoming the very best man you can become.

Also the blue pill is just so strong in nowaday’s world and indoctrination that some male’s rationalization hamster has become immune to regular red pill introductions. Is it really the fault of them, or the fault of society that let things come here? I don’t know. I’m not whining btw, I’m a red pill guy who owns his own sh!t in life fully, but I tend to be more understanding of “blue pill”ers and why they act the way they do.

Really, that’s the Male Rationalization Hamster right there, workin’ overtime to find an excuse. You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude, dude.

Whatever happens to you, your attitude should be that you have the power to overcome it. If you don’t have that attitude, then the smallest, petty little thing in the world can defeat you. You don’t need to get hit by a car and have your spine snapped, you’ll fold if your employer goes bankrupt and lays you off when your willing to look for excuses.

WTF? Sorry, but this post goes way off the deep end, tarring men with this broad blame brush is bull, just as it would be labeling women the same way. Like a lot of men I spent months ripping apart my soul looking at my part in the end of my marriage, the whole “Coulda, woulda, shouda”writ large. I’m fine with accepting my own failings and blame, but what I found in the end was there was nothing there that justified infidelity, because what it boils down is nothing justifies sneaking around on your spouse and actively planning your escape with a short list of potential OM’s .

My story is hardly unique around here, many of the guys mention their wives were already actively involved with other men and had a foot out the door when they arrived here, they’ve just caught them before they’d solidified another relationship. Was I or any of these other men perfect? certainly not, no man is, but none of their wives were either, their wives are the ones that broke their trust when they turned to other men. What it boils down to is it does not matter how one chooses to rationalize it, there is no excuse for infidelity, none. If you’ve done everything you can to fix the the marriage and it isn’t working, fine, do the right thing and divorce before you “accidentally” fall on another man’s penis.

“If I get it hit by a car, and becomee quadriplegic…
Oh, knock it off.
Really, that’s the Male Rationalization Hamster right there, workin’ overtime to find an excuse. You’ll never get anywhere with that attitude, dude.”

Oh yeah, man, realizing that there may be stuff on my way that can hinder me but not letting them or the thought of them debilitate me is really just my Hamster talking. Go Hamster Go. Maybe you shouldn’t feed your own Hamster with how everybody who argues with even a small point in your arguements has to be wrong/rationalizing…
Not looking to turn this into a flame war.

Basically we have to agree that there is a small percentage of people who will sail through life with a golden ticket. Not our target. Possibly %2.5 if we look from a statistical approach.
There is a high percentage( probably %95 ) of people that live OK lives. These are the people that have to be responsible for their lives, do whatever is necessary to succeed, work on themselves and grow and prosper and live a better life. These same people, however, if they leave things be as they are, will probably live a very sucky life.(Some’s will still not suck as much as the other’s but even they won’t leave their full potential.) Unfortunately for men in this group, they are being fed a bunch of lies by society and media and are tried to be brainwashed from very small ages. Some naturally shake this off and some have male friends that disabuse them. But most (like me) don’t. Some (like me) get their eyes opened after some horrible relationship and about life stuff, sometimes even by coincidence. But, again some are more thickskulled and/or more indoctrinated to swallow the red pill that they have to suffer much much more to even realize that something just ain’t right.
There also another small percentage(%2,5) that will get the shaft in life, no matter what they do.

Are men in that last group really at fault? I don’t know. A man who gets anxiety attacks when he tries to break the indoctrination, is he at fault? Maybe, but completely? I dunno.

Now I agree that basically blue-pill non-natural men are essentially what’s killing the relationships. If the MAP and MMSL is having this much success(men changing themselves to be a better self), what does that tell you? We already know that nearly all women subconsciously understand and even practice Game. And once the man starts changing to a red-pill dude, they follow suit. But these guys who fuck up their relationships, don’t get what they are doing really. This stuff, Game, MMSL, whatever, aren’t being slammed into our faces so we can learn without first getting very bad experiences. Even then we have to crawl through other sites or just have luck to get to stuff like this. So, still are these guys really at blame because they cannot make a jump, because they are told constantly that they don’t need to?

I know blaming society won’t make a difference, but it will be the truth. Getting men to admit they are truly fcking up(The Immediate side of true change) and getting society to change their stupid views on masculinity and what it means to be a man(The Slower side of small change) can only be the true solution we must look at.

I know blaming society won’t make a difference, but it will be the truth. Getting men to admit they are truly fcking up(The Immediate side of true change) and getting society to change their stupid views on masculinity and what it means to be a man(The Slower side of small change) can only be the true solution we must look at.

Yes, and I suppose my main point is that the men who could do better but won’t are not and never will be part of either the fast or slow solution. In fact, by demanding society give them what they refuse to try an earn, they’re actually contributing to the problems.

I am a female who recently found your site. I read the whole book in less than 12 hrs. My husband is a natural alpha who has cultivated his beta side and we would be blissfully happy…but for the elephant in our house.

I think the main issue is porn addiction. Within the first year of dating his sexual appetite became surpassed by mine. My love language is sex (lol- seriously…if I am bedded often and violently I will be the sweetest creature on earth…) so not getting the sexual fulfillment I need is a critical issue. It literally leads to me resenting him and generally hating life.

So his porn addiction led to escalating kinks…to the point where he brought up swinging. I declined…I am hungry for my husband. This led to serious sexual dry spells and him arguing artfully and endlessly about ‘why not’, it would please me, it turns me on to see you with other men.

Lets just say his best friend has a free pass to access me. So do countless other random men of his choosing. He leaves the camcorder on the dresser & I push play to capture the session so he can watch later (he is never home during). I am ‘rewarded’ for compliance (gentleness, kindness, lovemaking) and punished if I decline.

Obviously I can decline at any point I truly wish. But the day he began pushing this set up…I felt like our marriage died. And ‘why not’ seemed like a good explanation. I am not getting sex at home and he is pushing for these encounters to happen.

So far I have been 100% physical only. But I find myself aching, looking for a knight in shining armor to whisk me away from this perversion and protect me and never let another man touch me again.

I did voice my distaste and displeasure when he first brought it up. He knew that my first husband tried to push a threesome with another man and I was heartbroken- before we married I said ‘please, never ask me to do that, don’t ever share me’ and look where we are.

You all people who attack Athol for this post are sad losers. You are morons who don’t get a few key things and attack a person who helps you because of your own stupidity.

As a person who also gives relationship advice from time to time I can absolutely agree that the hardest thing in diagnosing relationships and giving advice is people withholding information. Usually they withhold information that make themselves appear in a bad light.

I remember a guy who came to me for advice on game and relationships. On our fifth meeting he asked me for advice how to persuade his wife for a threesome with another man to fulfill his fantasy. I realized that he has understood nothing. I explained him that such porn induced phantasies are just totally abhorrent if shifted to real life and how self-destructive it is. He agreed reluctantly. I after that didn’t reply to his calls anymore, I am not wasting my time on a defeatist.

There are countless other examples where men have blamed their wives only to later accidentally reveal that they have problems with alcohol or gambling. Many of them only see problems with their wives but do not consider themselves addicts when they surely are. I tell these losers that they must finish their problems first and not so much try to lean some magic focus pokus game from me. Most of time they get angry and leave. Good riddance.

Many of you pathetic slobs assume that Game is some miracle tool that can help you score chicks or keep your wife’s vagina permanently wet, while you yourselves are either lazy, submissive, stupid, fat, boring, superficial, ugly, low, amoral, sadistic, masochistic, non assertive, non ambitious, smelly, obnoxious, with addictions to either gambling, alcohol, porn, destructive fetish, computers or whatever.

No you losers, Game is I not a miracle. Game is living relationships according to the NATURAL LAW. Game breaks no laws, it fallows nature’s laws perfectly and punishes you for every deviation from these laws, according to the degree of deviation. And just like before criminal law you are responsible, whether you knew about the law or you didn’t. You are ALWAYS RESPONSIBLE, for anything that happens in your life. No exceptions.

And yes there are women who are unmarriagable and who will cheat and make you miserable no matter how you game her. But who is responsible for marrying her? Was her father holding a shotgun at your back when you said “I do” to her?

The key to not getting offended to this article is to understand that while a cheating or disrespecting wife is more responsible before God or society or whatever you are afraid to be responsible before – you are always responsible before YOURSELF no matter what happens to you. And no else is ever responsible for your life! Only you are responsible! That’s the right attitude of a winner! The right attitude of a Man!

Also a special note to the moron who calls him self Sherlock. No in a red pill society women will not keep being massively unfaithful because of hypergamy. Women, unless put in an unnatural situation where they have to, do not compare men by wallet or status or length as men compare women by breast size, face or ass. Women compare the feelings men induce in them on their own skin. In a red pill society women would just not be put under so many unnecessary chances for them to get a taste of other men. They would be housewives and would see other men only from afar or when they are guests who pay respect to her husband. A women is capable of logically understanding that another man is richer or taller, but unless she has felt his tallness or wealth and most importantly his dominance she will not feel attracted to him especially if her man is dominant enough.

Best. Blogpost. Ever. I 1000 percent agree. Most relationship problems are caused by the males. If you dont notice women trying harder than men to build their relationship in most couples you know then where do you live? For the remaining minority?
Cheated? Didnt maintain attraction or mate guard.
.drugged out? Didnt maintain the health of your family.
Medical? Not being caring enough if short term, if long term, not being caring or a good ender.
Bat shit crazy? You picked her.
Its 100 percent your fault.
You havent fixed it.
The tools to fix it are out there.
athols book is one of those tools.
Fix it
It being the elephant in the room.

So I guess my dilemma is…I desperately wish my husband would read the book & become the man it describes. He’s really close…we really do subscribe to almost everything I have read on here. But…I almost feel as though he slammed a door shut when he even suggested this arrangement. I am left wondering ‘can this be salvaged?’. I almost feel like it was a deal breaker that he can never make up for.

I thoroughly enjoyed the early days when he was vigilant at mate guarding me. (My girlfriends were horrified while i quite enjoyed it). He used to say that he would never ‘cast his pearl before swine’…and now I am terrorized by the thought that I am not desired and treasured since he would share me like he does.

And although I am hyper sexual with my mate…I otherwise am very conservative in public. So much so that I won’t see a male ob/gyn because it makes me uncomfortable to be touched by another man. He knows this about me- he also knows how devastated I was when my first husband tried to force the issue.

Why two men in a row??? What is wrong with me that they want to give away frivolously the most beautiful and sacred thing I have to offer as a woman? Can this be fixed & should I even try?

Gina, I’m sorry to say this, but the common denominator is you. You should see someone to find out why you don’t value yourself enough to just say no. I can’t tell you what to do. I would not stay with someone who wanted me to sleep with others when I did not want to.

Gina: you’ve got a complicated situation. But I think you’ve got to establish boundaries. And boundary number 1 would be that you are not going to sleep w/ another man besides your H. You are walking on dangerous turf w/ this. I do not see any possible scenario where you come out ahead on something like this.

This is clearly not what you want. IDK if you can fix your marriage. But there is something about your mate selection process that is flawed. You would not end up w/ 2 men who wanted to loan you out to friends by accident. You must be doing something to select these people.

My wife to be made it crystal clear that she would not be playing 2nd fiddle to anyone. And that was that. There was no negotiating this. I think you need to be crystal clear about this too. You are Absolutely not going to fuck another man for your husband. You cannot ask your husband to not share you. You tell your husband that you will not be shared.

I’m just a man with an opinion. I am not Athol. But it seems to me that your elephant needs to be addressed using the methods outlined in the column after this one. IE, divorce papers waiting to be signed. Men understand action. We do not understand female complaining and whining. You need to set your boundary.

I hope this works out for you. There are countless men who would be thrilled to have you all to themselves.

I think current husband got the idea when I told him about first husbands request. Even though it was in the context of ‘please never ever share me’.

I guess what I wonder is if I want to continue in a marriage where my husband lends me out like a power tool to his buddies and even worse picks random men from the Internet. This does not feel like being cherished and protected. If I refuse- then it’s not like he’s suddenly changed his mind…he still wants to give me away but I am just non compliant.

I am bothered just as much that he wants this so badly as I am that it is happening.

People can be horrible. In most totally flaming, in-shambles relationships, there is a bunch of bullshit on both sides. I think that when people use terminology like “hypergamy” and “alpha” constantly, like everything must be explained in terms of PUA and NLP methodology, it irritates me to no end, because as Athol states in the article at top, the SECOND you start armchair philosophizing about how the opposite sex (men or women) are “stupid, irrational bitches/bastards” and then go on to blame every problem ever in your relations with the opposite sex, you’ve already lost because you’re not paying attention to the fact that YOU ARE NOT A VULCAN. You are not perfect, logical and free of any and all personality or behavioral drawbacks. And 99% of the time, the Elephant in the Room is something that you don’t want to deal with because it means you will have to take responsibility for a good chunk of it.

There are a number of truly irrational people/behaviors out there, but most of the time, people’s behavior makes total sense when you look at it in context.

For example- my mom interacts with EVERY MAN EVER (even men she’s not sexually attracted to) in a semi sexual/flirtatious manner. Now on one hand, you can scream “HYPERGAMY!” and then pat yourself on the back, but if you take a look at my mom’s history, she was born to a teen mom who was an alcoholic and whose boyfriends molested her at least once or twice. My mom had to interact sexually with a lot of men because she was out of the house as a teenager and working full time/renting a place before she turned 18 and a lot of the time, it was only due to the kindness of men that she was able to keep herself off the streets and fed regularly. So OF COURSE she is going to act this way. She wants everyone to pay attention to her all the time because if she didn’t behave in that way as a child, her alcoholic out-of-it mom wouldn’t have FED HER and she would have starved to death.

Now obviously, her example is extreme, but all of us are shaped by various things in our pasts. And obviously, just because something shitty happened in your past doesn’t mean you get to do shitty things with impunity. But I can tell you that in my own relationship, there has been times where I knew my husband wanted sex with me and declined because his method of showing interest in sex was to come home all sweaty and stinky (and not even change his underwear or wipe himself with the many unscented wipes that I keep around for such occasions), and then to flop onto the couch said stinky boxers without a shirt on and kind of sigh and roll his eyes while I am in the middle of a project. I knew what it meant, but I chose to pretend to ignore it because he ought to know better by now (I’m not going to give him a lecture if he already knows this shit), and therefore sex did not happen. But the second or third time he did it, I finally had to actually tell him that I was not going to fuck him while he smelled like a sewer between his legs, and if all the foreplay he was offering was an eye roll and a giant heavy sigh, that wasn’t going to cut it for me. He fixed the problem, and we started having sex more frequently again (because I like sex, I just don’t like passive-aggressive, gnarly smelling sex where I have to do all the work and I’m not even turned on).

If you want to fix your relationship, sometimes you have to eat a piece of Humble Pie, admit where you went wrong and try and see if your partner is willing to figure out some way to work with you and fix the problem. Because sure, you could keep being right and thinking you’re all superior and shit, but your relationship will FAIL. If I wasn’t willing to talk to my husband about something that he really ought to know better about and just balled all that frustration and anger into a bigger and bigger ball of malice, it may have led to no sex or intimacy of any sort for weeks and weeks (which is just awful for me too, ya know), and lead to a big schism in our relationship.

When you “punish” the other person by withholding love and affection, you’re also punishing yourself (because ideally, you want to give love and affection to people you love, right?), so sometimes it pays to swallow your pride, to stop whining about “hypergamous bitches” and to actually be real with your spouse.

Because sure, you can be RIGHT and convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the crazy was in the other person’s court and you’re totally infallible all by yourself alone. Or, if it’s worth working out, it’s time to put a big bright light on that Elephant in the Room and actually fucking get down to the dirty work of working it out.

It sounds like NOT being a sex toy to random guys is a non-negotiable thing. It seems like you need to walk away from this.

Some helpful tips:

1) Do not discuss your exes and their shitty behavior in detail with your next boyfriend/husband. Mention that he was abusive and addicted to porn and don’t give any further details. Many men, especially dominant men, like the idea of “one upping” a previous mate, and therefore they will be drawn to doing things that you mentioned happened in a previous relationship because to most men, mentioning something = you liked it, even if you SAY you didn’t like it.

2) Get yourself tested for STDs, especially since you’re being forced to have sex with guys from the internet. If you eventually want to have kids, just imagine how you’re going to be all messed up if you develop HIV, Hep C or HPV.

3) Be alone for awhile. Seriously. You’re picking shitty men (who cares if they’re dominant if they’re shitty predators?), and you need to clear your head and stop looking for someone else to fix and control you. There are plenty of dominant men who aren’t predators and predators are looking for damaged women who will be easily controlled. THAT is why your current spouse is forcing you to do these things- he swooped in and got you when you were vulnerable from a similar abuse, and then pushed it until he got what he wanted.

4) Cut all contact off with exes unless you absolutely have to. If you don’t have children, you don’t need these people in your life. They are predatory fuckheads and don’t deserve to be with anyone.

I wonder if all this terror of hypergamy doesn’t originate in some kind of deeply buried male fantasy… The beginning of the end of my marriage came when my husband invited a man he knew I was infatuated with over, got everyone good and drunk, spanked me in front of all the guests and invited the other man to do the same. I declined out of… Decorum… I suppose, but I’ve never been able to get inside his head. I thought I understood men in general, and my husband in particular. But months later, I’m still quite lost.

Anyway, Gina! Don’t have sex you don’t want desire. With anyone. This is so much the root of sexual misery: women feel we must please a man at all costs or our lives are valueless. It’s just not so, and the feminists were right about that. Celibacy can be a good thing, give you space to think. I have been doing algebra lately: I like how it has neat right answers, darling. Be well

Or I should say, deeply buried “heterosexual” male fantasy. I think a non negligible percentage of seemingly normal straight guys are probably simultaneously deeply drawn to, and repulsed by, the idea of their wives fucking someone else. I don’t know what the root of that is! Then they get mad at us about their own conflicted desires, because as Athol says, they’re always sooooo logical and so it falls to us to represent irrationality in general.

“But the truth is that most women who become wives, are all in once they marry. You have to actively do something wrong to mess that loyalty up.”

If you had started by writing “Assuming that [the quote above] is true, then …”, I would not be able to find any fault with your article.

Perhaps you could write an article explaining why you think that this is true for most women who become wives.

I would like this to be true, but the data from the past 50 years seems to indicate that most women are chasing after the top 20%, to be pumped and dumped, for as long as they can.

Then, once they get kicked off the carousel, they regretfully marry one of the other 80% because they don’t want to be alone, or want their overpriced dress and party, or need the beta bucks for the children of their alpha fucks (at least until they are vested for cash and prizes), and so on.

Official statistics show that many, if not most, women are getting married later and later. By this point, they are having to settle for what they can get, even though they know that they deserve better.

Your article makes perfect sense with respect to women who are high enough on the scale to be able to get their alphas, or couples who married young as virgins, and various others who were not “settling with resentment for much less than they deserve” .

You provide valuable insight and functional advice, so I am wondering if you have basis information that I am missing, or if you just didn’t specify the context for this article clearly enough.

Athol, very good post. I’m curious about your take on non-sexual “emotional affairs”. My husband has a dysfunctional female work colleague he became close to outside of work. She’s a party girl, the kind with a revolving bedroom door – new boyfriend every two weeks. She’s admitted to STD’s and I know he’s scared enough of getting them that there is probably no sex. But I don’t know for sure. She’s cute and cheerleader-y looking and he’s a fat geek who never had that kind of girl look at him twice, so I get the attraction.

Two years ago this evil bitch caused horrible trouble in our social group, lying about us and manipulating others in the group until they ostracised us completely. Saw her do this before so know it’s a pattern for her. I lost my bestie, and my husband lost his entire circle of friends.

The worst thing is, for some reason, my husband and EVERY other man in that group defends and protects this woman, so that she gets away with the most amazing amount of crap. The other women in the group saw it, and only tolerated her because our men were clueless. If this were mythology, she would be a siren, as she excels at luring men to their doom.

It all started when I caught her out in a huge lie, called her on it, and asked her not to speak about my friends to me this way. That was the last moment of peace I had. She told me she didn’t like me and was going to see to it that my marriage ended. Then she engineered the event that got us ostracized.

When I laid out the facts for my husband he turned on me and insisted I was making it all up. I was in shock, as personal integrity is huge for me and he knows I would never lie to him about something like this.

The same day, she sent him an evil email accusing me of all sorts of untrue bullshit. He said he didn’t know who to believe. I asked him to end his friendship with this woman but he only took a few months break before going back to taking her out.

Now, they go out by themselves for drinks every few months. He tells me I shouldn’t feel threatened but…really?? If it was your wife Athol, how would you feel?

While I have my faults, I have been as good and faithful a wife as I know how to be. I’ve never so much as looked at another man and up to this point my husband was a decent man and good lover.

But…my husband is an emotionally weak man and is not the captain of anything. He defaults most decisions to me and I do the best I can, but he assigns anything that goes wrong (“goes wrong” in his eyes, and usually because of his nonparticipating) as my fault. He has mild OCD and Aspergers, so is difficult to cope with at the best of times. Often it’s like being a parent to an unruly three year old boy you cannot discipline or control.

We no longer have sex as I am not sure if it’s safe or not. I gave him an ultimatum on it and am sticking to it as long as he persists in this dysfunctional relationship with the other woman. He got angry at my making this boundary, and we almost broke up over it. We don’t talk about it but he once said he had to “regain his trust for me” before sex would be possible. Wow! Really???

At this point I’d leave but my company got shut down last year and I haven’t been able to get another job yet. Thank god, there are no kids. I have no place else to go, so am toughing it out and trying to just ignore it. But that’s very difficult.

I’m curious as to your take on this kind of “emotional affair” and if there is any way to get him away from this poisonous bitch. If it was a sexual affair it would be totally different, as he *knows* that’s wrong, but the way they are carrying on he’s managed to convince himself is “okay”. Far from it, it’s all the more damaging because he has managed to delude himself completely, and my protests fall on deaf ears.

Anything I say about the other woman lands me in a huge pile of trouble and I have to cool it as I can’t afford a divorce right now. So talking it out with him or giving him your book is out of he question. But every time he sees her she clearly plants more seeds to “hate your wife” as he comes home and finds ten times as much fault with me.

I’m slowly imploding. Any thoughts on this kind of situation? Thank you Athol, I am a faithful reader and appreciate all the effort you have taken to bring these issues to light.

Ok well I would come to the forum but after being told that the sixteen passwords I chose- combos of numbers, letters and symbols good enough for my bank and medical records site – were too weak, I got tired of trying. Too bad the barrier to entry is so high, I would really like to have participated. Thanks anyway. Meanwhile, does anyjone readjng this thread have any advice on my situation?

Teresa, you wrote a bunch of stuff, but it’s not clear to me if you want to save the marriage or not. Sounds like you’d be moving on except you cannot find a job. So do you want to stay or go? What would be the outcome that you are looking for?